One thing I have noticed is that I very, very seldom remember to “like” a main post that I, erm, well, like.
I assume that this is mostly explained by noting that I am self-centered sociopath, but I think there are some interface reasons for it as well.
It might be nice if on the main article pages along with the (new?) social media share bar there was a button in the bar to “Like” the article. (Also, the share bar should be repeated at the end of long articles, since that is where I am when I would theoretically make a decision to share it). Also the permalink section of the thread in BBS has so much empty space that it seems a shame not to use that to better call out the option to “like” the main post.
This is all assuming that the use of the “Like” button for an article actually provides any kind of valuable feedback to the editors/authors.
Perhaps @beschizza and other editors could chime in, but from my perspective the “like” button is there mainly to express appreciation of BBS posts, not the main article itself. Because the main article really doesn’t exist here…
I’d say an article with healthy discussion (e.g. a reasonable number of interesting replies) is the best way to gauge how much the community “liked” the parent article, more so than explicit clicking/tapping of the like button on it.
Yes. The plan is to focus on BBS on the front door. The only counts or like-style stuff we’re likely to expose on the hompage will be discourse comment count and a discourse like that would apply to the auto generated forum thread OP, if ever that is made available
